The second boss of the game was named Sodom in the Japanese version, which sounds similar to the biblical city of the same name, as well as the sexual activity of sodomy. This resulted in Sodom's name being changed to Katana in the west.

In the Super Famicom (Japanese) version of the game, there is a small, dark dot on the forehead of Belger's character portrait, most likely as a result of shading. In the international release, Nintendo removed this dot for fear it would be mistaken for a bindi and thus make players think that they were beating up a disabled Hindu. On other platforms, the character portraits are too small to display such a minute detail clearly.

In the Japanese game's intro, Jessica appears in a bra on the T.V. screen for a few seconds before Damnd does. However, in the US and international versions, Jessica is never shown. Damnd's face is always in the monitor, but you can hear Jessica screaming in the background. In the Sega CD version, however, Jessica can be seen in the intro wearing a red dress.

The final boss of the game, Belger, is seen sitting in an electric wheelchair, though he is perfectly capable of walking without it. The exact reason why he needs the wheelchair is unknown. Some players theorize that Belger uses a wheelchair to trick his enemies into thinking that he is frail and helpless, or to discourage them from attacking him, as it would look uncivilized or cowardly to physically assault a "disabled" person.

In order to avoid the associated controversies, the wheelchair was digitally redesigned into an executive office chair during the game's transition from Japan to the rest of the world. The international version also adds new frames of animation for Belger walking, just to make it clear that he isn't disabled. In the Japanese version, he has no walking animation and merely hops around the room.

Poison's name comes from the rock band of the same name. She wears a hat just like C.C Deville, the lead guitarist, who wore the cap for a while. It has the exact same skull logo on the front.

"Also, we had a woman co-worker who we asked to list as many names as she could think of for our characters. She was really into rock music, so that's why lots of them turned out to be named after band members!" - Akira Nishitani, Final Fight Game Designer (Retro Gamer Magazine Issue 37)

It was originally believed that Guy beat Cody up because he was jealous that Cody got the girl (Jessica) but in actual fact, Jessica had just called out Cody's name, Cody ignored her and Guy was annoyed at Cody's behavior (The whole point of their quest was to rescue her), so he knocks Cody down to give Jessica a chance to catch up. Furthermore, Guy already has a lover (Rena) and in the game's intro he doesn't seem to know who Jessica is.

Guy's name was originally spelled "Gay" in early development versions. As director Akira Nishitani put it, the development team wasn't "really aware of English spelling and pronunciation conventions." An unused graphic with the names "Gay, Haggar and Cody" can still be found in the game's code.

If the player picks up Edi E.'s gum while they have full life, they'll be awarded 42910 points. This is a numerical representation of designer Akira Nishitani's birthday, September 10th of Showa 42. The year Showa 42 is equivalent to 1967 in the Gregorian calendar commonly used throughout the world.

The SNES version is missing the character of Guy. A later version of the game was released called Final Fight Guy, which replaced Cody with Guy and made up a new story to explain Cody's absence to the game. The game was sold in stores in Japan and was a rental only at Blockbuster in America.

In the Japanese version, when you finish the car smashing bonus stage, the car's owner will come out and yell, "Oh, my god!". In the North American version, it was changed to him yelling, "Oh, my car!".

Final Fight had a working title of Street Fighter '89, and was intended to be a sequel to the original Street Fighter. The name was changed after the operators stated that the game "was nothing like Street Fighter".

Poison, the female thug, was simply intended to be a female gang member to contrast all the large bulky male fighters and add variety to the game. An American playtester working at Capcom objected to the player hitting females, to which Akira Yasuda pointed out that the females were actually transvestites, as stated in Poison's profile that she was born a man, but dresses as a woman. This wasn't enough for North America, so Poison and a recolor of her character, Roxy, were replaced with two male characters called Billy and Sid on the Super Nintendo.

Poison was also censored in the Sega CD version to increase the size of her shirt, so that less of her breasts were revealed in several poses.